In 1948, during the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the founding document of the international human rights system – Mexican delegate Pablo Campos Ortiz advocated for a “very broad conception” of asylum. Seconding a Lebanese proposal, Campos Ortiz said the world should recognize “not only the right of seeking asylum but also the right to be granted asylum.”

Mexico provides an exception to that rule – in law, if not in practice. It took almost 60 years, but in August 2016, a Campos Ortiz-inspired amendment to the Mexican Constitution recognized migrants’ right to seek and be granted asylum. The amendment proposal called Mexico a “country of refuge.”

The next year, Mexico City approved a local constitution declaring itself a sanctuary city where authorities will “prevent, investigate, sanction and offer reparations for human rights violations.”

Migrants in the presidential election

Despite an official commitment to the rights of migrants, Mexico has recently followed the U.S.‘s punitive lead on immigration.

Between 2007 and March 2017, the U.S. government invested US$1.5 billion in the Mérida Initiative, a U.S.-Mexico partnership officially intended “to fight organized crime and associated violence while furthering respect for human rights and the rule of law.”

Despite Trump’s Twitter claims that Mexico has done “nothing at stopping people” from coming to the U.S., the Frontera Sur program has proven effective. Between 2014 and 2015, Mexican deportations of Central American migrants – primarily Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans – more than doubled, from 78,733in 2013 to 176,726 in 2015.

Walking the walk

From restrictions on asylum claims to mass deportations, the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies may actually push Mexico closer to becoming the “refuge country” it claims to be.

According to a 2017 study by the country’s National Human Rights Commission, around 20 percent of 1,000 Central American migrants surveyed while passing through Mexican territory have now decided to stay in the country. Border Patrol detained some 351,000 people attempting to cross illegally into the U.S. in 2017, down from 600,000 in 2016.

That has made migrants a hot topic in the lead-up to Mexico’s July 1 general election – but not in the way that might be expected. Presidential candidates have largely been largely sympathetic to their plight.

During the second presidential debate, which aired on May 21, an audience member from the border city of Tijuana asked the four candidates how they would improve Mexico’s “outrageous” treatment of undocumented Central Americans.

Front-runner Andres Manuel López Obrador, from the Morena party, answered that he would stop doing the U.S.’s “dirty work” on immigration if elected.

López Obrador proposed instead an “alliance for progress” between the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Central America to foster regional job creation, economic development and security, thus reducing the need to migrate. He did not explain how he would persuade Trump to join.

Candidate Ricardo Anaya, who heads an unusual left-right alliance between the progressive Revolutionary Democratic Party and the conservative National Action Party, said Mexico must be the “moral authority” on immigration. It should treat Central American migrants the way Mexicans would like to be treated in the U.S.: justly and humanely.

Even José Antonio Meade, from President Peña Nieto’s Revolutionary Institutional Party, acknowledged that criminals, economic migrants and victims of violence are different groups of people and should treated as such.